Dying Daily #70: Mindfulness Monday – Disposable

This is my first attempt to provide a link to this blog instead of posting it everywhere in full. Please bear with me as I work the kinks out.

Tyler got really into trains when he was little.

I bought him all this wooden track that would fit together really well and could be expanded as much as we wanted. It didn’t work on the carpet, so I bought a 4ft. x 8ft. piece of ¾ in. plywood we would put it on. It became an entire world for him.

Trains went out, and Spiderman came in. The plywood was placed up against the wall at an angle, with little wooden handholds screwed on. Spiderman (in his Spiderman costume) climbed all over it, shooting webs and often falling on his head.

The thing with kids is that they keep growing up.

Tyler is an excellent artist and musician. I am neither. The Spiderman wall, along with a bookcase, became a little art studio where he could paint and draw with some sort of privacy. I still have all of his work in a box in the closet.

Skateboarding came next. This was, unfortunately, something he and I did together.

My left wrist still cannot bear weight very well, it hurts to rest my left elbow an anything, even a pillow or the arm of a couch. We spent a lot of time at the skate parks here in town, but we also turned the plywood into a ramp attached the wall in the garage so we could ride down it and out into the driveway.

The plywood has also had brief stints as a clubhouse wall and a brace to hold a bunch of other lumber up in my shed. Currently, it serves as a frame for my archery targets so I can practice in my backyard. This one piece of plywood has now been with me for at least 13 years, and it still has time left in it. Probably the best $40 I ever spent.

We live in a disposable culture.

Everything can be thrown away, because we believe we can simply replace it. This seems to even apply to people. It certainly applies to time.

Today, make note of the things you have had for a long time. Allow yourself to be grateful for their service to you. Look at the number of disposable things around you, and ask yourself if there might be a better way to accomplish whatever it is they accomplish for you.

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“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” Nietzsche